October 10, 2007

Head of Propaganda for Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, once stated; 'If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.' Nick Griffin takes Goebbels dictum to heart in his fascinating article from September's Identity magazine.

Before we take a belated look at Nick Griffin's bizarre article in September's Identity (the BNPs glossy in-house magazine), we have a couple of comments to make. First of all, thank you to the person who sent the magazine to us here at LUAF Towers - we really appreciate getting a chance to see the kind of nonsense the leadership throws at the membership. Second, an apology to the people we know have been waiting to read our take on the article; we've been busy but you can stop emailing now, thank you. :-)

The first thing that strikes the eye about the article is the use of the rat tipping over a drum of toxic waste to illustrate it. This motif is repeatedly used, presumably as a visual reference to the 'vermin' within the party and the stories they (and we) spread about in an attempt to show the public and BNP members exactly what is going on inside the BNP itself, thus keeping the membership au fait with what Nick Griffin and co would conceal from them. What worries us most about this article is not that Griffin uses it as a vehicle for his lies but that he clearly believes them himself.

Given the BNP's propensity for gimmicky stunts like litter-picking (when what the party should actually be doing is reporting litter to relevant local authorities and demanding they should clear it instead) and the party's stance on graffiti artists (hanging's too good for 'em), one wonders why Griffin chose to illustrate his article with illustrations stolen and cropped (one assumes without permission) from the most famous graffiti artist in this country, Banksy. The complete image used can be seen here.

The whole point of the piece in Identity, entitled 'A tidal wave of anti-BNP propaganda', seems to be to whine about the fact that the BNP is opposed on various levels by several organisations for a number of perfectly valid reasons. Naturally enough, Searchlight comes in for particular criticism (though we don't, which is irritating but just means we'll have to step our work up a bit) with a good deal of waffle about a BNP election candidate and activist (who stood for the party as recently as May 2007) who, according to Griffin, turned out to be a 'paid informer' for Searchlight. This was allegedly discovered after what Griffin describes as an 'internal intelligence review', which appears to have largely consisted of illegally checking through his BNP email account.

Right from the start of this article, Griffin's paranoia and control-freakery are both evident and disturbing but it is his clear ability to treat his own blatant lies as fact that should most concern any BNP member who is able to view the BNP leader and his party objectively. One of the more startling examples of this is Griffin's brief mention of the continuing Solidarity fiasco:

'As in the earlier instance where a Searchlight agent effectively took over Bradford BNP and then provided 'cover' for BBC mole Jason Gwynne and his 'Secret Agent' stunt and as appears to have happened in the recent failed coup attempt to derail the nationalist trade union Solidarity...'

Regular readers will know full well that there was no 'coup attempt' within Solidarity until the former General Secretary Pat Harrington, long-time friend of Griffins, was suspended for, among other things, accounting irregularities. Following his suspension, the BNP-supported Harrington, with the direct collusion of Nick Griffin, himself engineered a coup, taking Solidarity's PayPal account, website and money with him. This is fact - we know it and Griffin knows it, yet without a qualm, lies and tells the membership that this is not the case.

There's no real need to get into a deep discussion about Solidarity in this article except to offer Griffin's comment as an indication of his determination not to let the truth get in the way of a good story.

One little fantasy which seems to be engrossing Griffin is the one that suggests his party is riddled with hugely influential 'Searchlight moles' who seem capable of persuading anyone they fancy to slip into a pair of jackboots and start seig-heiling all over the place at the drop of a hat. According to him, Searchlight (the anti-fascist magazine) does everything it can to turn 'modern democratic nationalists into old-fashioned Nazis' and if he's surprised at all, it is only that his entire party isn't seig-heiling its way down Whitehall as he types. Pure paranoia of course. He does however, accept that not everyone within the party who is advocating a harder political line is a Searchlight agent, though those that aren't there thanks to Searchlight, he firmly labels 'cranks and losers'.

Regular readers will know that we are fed information from various sources both inside and outside the British National Party that helps us to disseminate the truth to everyone who cares to read it. Many of our correspondents not only send us information but also documentary evidence for their statements. The only reason we don't print such evidence is that it could lead directly back to the person who supplied it to us. As we've stated on a number of occasions, we never print anything accusatory unless we have corroboration from two or three sources, including at least one that we know and trust. These rules have worked extremely well over the past couple of years and have enabled us to produce some excellent reports on the shenanigans within the BNP - particularly when it comes to the financial chicanery that we long ago came to expect from Nick Griffin and the rest of the crooks at the top of the party.

Well, no. Because we tell the truth. Any refutation would only have the knock-on effect of exposing more lies and cover-ups.

Griffin's delusions extend to embrace the performance of his own party. At one point he suggests that the BNP's 'relentless advance' is coincident with the collapse of the far-left. Assuming his phrase 'far-left' to mean anyone who opposes the BNP, there is obviously no collapse. Nor is the BNP seeing any kind of relentless advance - unless complete stagnation for the past year counts.

At this point - madness firmly set in overdrive - he segues into one of the most bizarre diversions we've ever set eyes on, claiming that Nick Lowles of Searchlight and Peter Rushton of the 'nationalist' magazine Heritage and Destiny are one and the same person. Rushton, who reminds everyone who sees him for the first time of an aging Mr Bean, is not Nick Lowles and Nick Griffin knows perfectly well he isn't. So why tell such an obvious lie?

Griffin is anxious at the moment to promote the appalling Arthur Kemp, the author of the truly dreadful 'March of the Titans' and a former member of the South African Intelligence Services. Out of nowhere, Kemp, a hardcore racist and white supremacist, seems to have become the representative of the Ideological Training Department of the BNP - so much so that it will soon be impossible to attend a BNP conference or indeed to be an 'Voting Member' with limited voting rights unless one has received ideological training from Kemp, a man who, it is rumoured, is not even a member of the party himself.

Rushton is overtly more hardcore far-right than Griffin and appears to be getting something of a following consisting largely of those on the right who are sick of Griffin's increasingly futile attempts to break into mainstream politics by shoving his nazi past to one side and firmly concealing it from the gaze of a disapproving public. Griffin's hatred of anyone who shows up the BNP as any more than very slightly to the right of Genghis Khan is legendary and Rushton constantly badgering about the BNP's loss of its ideological way hasn't exactly endeared him to the Führer at Welshpool.

Quite why he picked on Nick Lowles to be Rushton's alter ego, only Griffin himself knows - but he also knows that it's a lie that many in the membership are unlikely to concern themselves with. His ridiculous claim that Rushton is another Searchlight 'agent' might well be believed by those who wish to remain loyal to the current incarnation of the BNP and newer members who have been taken in by the Griffinites, while those who consider the claim to be so stupid it's beneath contempt are those who are simply more likely to fall away from the party. These tend to be the longer-term nationalists - members who have been around for a few years and who are starting to take a closer look at Griffin, the constant accusations of misuse of party funds and the lies he spins, and who are beginning to ask the questions that they should have been asking for the past five years. These are the people who in any case, Griffin is desperate to get rid of.

The recent leadership challenge has allowed Nick Griffin to identify many of the dissentors in the ranks. Despite the fact that ballots are meant to be secret, Griffin seems to have all the supporters of Chris Jackson on a list and ready to throw out at a moment's notice and on the slightest pretext. We've already reported on the purging of a number of these people and have no doubt that we'll be reporting on a few more over the next few months. Griffin's fake identification of Peter Rushton as Nick Lowles will help him to falsely identify further dissentors who are sympathetic to Rushton as faux Searchlight 'agents'. This may also serve to undermine Rushton's credibility with the newer members of the party and will enable Kemp to revenge himself for the abiding antipathy that Rushton and he have been nurturing for the past fifteen years or so. The claim that Rushon and Lowles are the same person is certainly fraudulent but if it serves to cause problems for he and his comrade's enemies, Griffin will tell any lie that has the appropriate result.

Nick Griffin is playing a long game but he's playing it with people who have been around the far-right for a very long time and the feeling we have (which we share with a lot of our correspondents) is that he's riding for a fall by playing any game at all based on such an easily disprovable premise.

Griffin's lies will always show up more readily when he is referring to money - particularly when he is on the defensive, which he clearly is in this article. He picks on two examples to use as illustrations of the lengths we will go to in our attempts to destabilise him and the BNP.

The first example is that of the peculiar BNP accounts. Rather than explain satisfactorily why the accounts for last year are so shockingly late at great financial cost to the party, he chooses to dwell on the accusation that he and his colleagues in the leadership of the party are living in luxury thanks to misappropriation of party funds. Curiously, he chooses not to state clearly what happens to the enormous amount of money that is filtered into the party via the Trafalgar Club, stays well away from the question of how much money comes to the party from the States via the BNP-front Civil Liberty and doesn't venture into the cost/benefit ratio of establishing Great White Records, a financial disaster that anyone (except apparently the BNP) could see coming from a mile off.

Griffin then claims that the 'newest' story is the one that revolves around Croatia. Not so. The Croatia story is known to so many people in the party now that it's hardly worth reporting on except when someone sends us a new snippet of information that we can use. Griffin gives us nothing except the usual lies to be getting on with. He claims to have been approached by a supporter who had inherited a chunk of land in Croatia - not true. He makes it sound like a throwaway idea that was of no consequence - not true. And he claims to have approached the MEPs of the BNP's European 'sister parties' for help on the mystery inheritor's behalf. Again, not true. The BNP did approach the MEPs and were promptly and unceremoniously rebuffed. If all the claims of financial shenanigans in the BNP are truly false and can be proven to be false, why has Griffin never even so much as threatened to take Searchlight (or indeed us) to court for libel?

This whole article, four solid pages of Identity, is packed with lies that even the most gullible of BNP members could surely see through or at least expose with a minimal amount of research. Griffin refers to former Stoke BNP councillor Mark Leat, who you may remember stood down as a councillor for the BNP and moved across the chamber to become a 'non-aligned Independent' back in May (just a week after the local government elections). Three days after his move, the BNP group announced that it had withdrawn the whip (thrown him out) stating that he didn't work hard enough. Griffin now claims that he was got rid of because he was plotting to stand as an Independent against BNP 'loyalist' Mike Coleman and that he made all kinds of demands of the BNP group before the election. Not only that, but Griffin claims he is also working with a 'Searchlight-run phoney nationalist party to split the BNP vote in Stoke'.

In an interview with Simon Darby just a couple of days ago, Griffin stated that the best thing to do about the sites like ours that print the truth about the BNP and himself is not to look at them. He repeats that advice in this article, saying '...all you need to do is ignore it. If you hear someone doing Searchlight's dirty work, pull them up over it. And if they won't stop, don't have any misplaced sympathy for them when we boot them out'. Curiously, his next sentence is 'This is not about stopping free speech'. Oh yeah?

'Lively, even ferocious, internal debate about policies, tactics and how to make the party ever more accountable to its activist hardcore are both needed and welcome. But such debates must be conducted through the proper channels, and the overwhelming majority of our officials and key activists have already decreed are Voting Member's discussion groups, meetings and conference motions.'

Not much room there for the ordinary membership to be able to discuss anything at all. Referring back to the leadership challenge and those who voted against him, Griffin goes on;

'Over the rest of this year, the members of this Negative Tendency will systematically be quietly approached and given one last chance to accept common sense and exercise self-restraint - or go.'

So much for secret ballots and so much for the future of the 337 members who voted against Griffin, and possibly the 4904 who chose not to vote at all. Griffin's almost insane hatred of those who dared to vote against him has been demonstrated numerous times by his liberal use of the words 'vermin', 'cranks', 'losers', 'Hollywood Nazis' and 'negative fools', but he has another phrase for them.

'When the rubbish has been binned we'll be a happier party, more united and more effective than ever.'

It'll also be a party that's nearly 10% smaller than it is at present. Or possibly a good deal more. Griffin reserves his most vicious attack though for the end of the article.

'We are cutting out the last of the poison-mongers. It doesn't matter if they are councillors or donors or minor party heroes or otherwise good activists - none of these pluses outweighs the damage done by individuals who spread lies. Whether plants, dupes or negative losers, they will be tolerated no longer...'

Do you reckon his screen was covered in spit after he wrote that?

The fact is that the whole article is an attempt to paint everyone who opposes Griffin with a similar brush - they are all Searchlight agents, liars, fruitcakes, losers and/or jackboot-fetishists. It's pretty clear though that what they all share is that they oppose Nick Griffin himself either, like the hardcore right-wing, because they consider he's gone soft, or because they believe he's feathering his own nest at the constant expense of the membership or possibly simply because he's patently losing it and striking out at random to destroy his mostly imaginary enemies. It looks like the BNP's Night of the Long Knives is set to be a good deal longer yet.

"'As in the earlier instance where a Searchlight agent effectively took over Bradford BNP and then provided 'cover' for BBC mole Jason Gwynne and his 'Secret Agent' stunt and as appears to have happened in the recent failed coup attempt to derail the nationalist trade union Solidarity...'"

This is the best article I've ever seen on this site. You've done a great job.

The Peter Rushton/Nick Lowles lie was too ridiculous for words...

Yet for some reason the October issue of Searchlight seems almost to gloss over the lie.

(Well, you can understand them not really wanting to show Nick Lowles's photo, as I guess they would have needed to if they really desired to blow this story out of the water - maybe this why is they just printed a short denial, & had a bit of a laugh over it, and no more.)

Who the hell cares? The BNP are going from strength to strength and Nick Griffin is a smart leader and is leading a great reform of the party. To replace him would be to strip the reason why the BNP is so much bigger today than any nationalist party ever has been. I couldn't care less if he throws out any incompetant challengers to the leadership position.

Re: webeatthebnp:

"Why do these "nationalists", all so proud of their culture and heritage, all share an inability to spell, punctuate and use correct syntax and grammar in the English language?"

Do you realise how many people in this country can't do the things you just listed? I refer to the general public, not just right wingers/nationalists. Maybe this could be one reason why we are fed up and looking for change?

To excellent posts in one day, well done LUAF.Clearly Nick Griffin is facing civil war due to his dictatorship, but then thats fascism for you.I wonder what this Reform Group is all about. I know LUAF that your busy but what is it?

'I wonder what this Reform Group is all about. I know LUAF that your busy but what is it?'

The Reform Group is a small network of Tyndallite BNP members who strongly oppose the style of Griffin’s leadership. They include Griffin’s traditional critics such as Richard Edmonds, one-time national activities organiser of the party, but other more mainstream party members are involved (like Chris Jackson). That's pretty much it really.

'the long awaited accounts should be online at the electoral commssion website within a few days'

I'll believe it when I see it, frankly - though it'll probably be a load of lies when it turns up anyway.

"Nick Lowles does not even exist.There is no record of him anywhere. No-one has ever met him or seen him or even photographed him. How has he got away with that? I believe he is a just a name used by Gable and co for Searchlight's activities."

Let's be very clear about what what has been alleged. It is that Peter Rushton, alias Rushmore, of Heritage and Destiny, and Nick Lowles, editor of Searchlight, are one and the same person.

If you think this might actually be true, may I suggest the following? Go to the North West Nationalists' website and have a look at the posting for 28th September 2007.

You'll find the original article reprinted from Identity ('A Tidal Wave of Anti-BNP Propaganda'). Scroll down the article to the 4th & last page, and - there is Peter Rushton's picture.

You can easily enlarge the picture and have a good look at him. Now if NG is telling the truth this - let's not forget - is also Nick Lowles. But we need to go somewhere else to find Nick Lowles. So let's type "Nick Lowles" into a search engine. Oh look - we discover he is the author of a number of books about football hooligans, the international Nazi skinhead scene, Combat 18, etc, etc. All these books involved doing a lot of interviews & research. So I would suggest, in fact, that a great many people have actually met and spoken to Nick Lowles.

Next, if we continue to search we discover that, these days, it appears, Nick Lowles addresses quite a few meetings (chiefly about stopping the BNP). A few examples are (i) a talk he gave to the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform (LCER) - check out their newsletter in Spring 2007, page 6 for a report about Nick Lowles's speech. Or (ii) a debate held in the Boothroyd Room at Portcullis House, Westminster on 28 March 2007 entitled 'Making Votes Count Against the Far Right.' The speakers included Jon Cruddas, Dagenham MP, Mick Rix (GMB), Billy Bragg (see Bragg's website for details of the meeting) and…. Nick Lowles.

Finally, and perhaps this might weigh more in the balance, Phil 'Doc' Edwards (until recently BNP press officer) on his website described the Daily Mirror's Hope Not Hate bus tour as a 'farce orchestrated by the comedy double act of Lowles and Cruddas'. (See Doc's Diary, 'Hope not Hate at the Daily Moron', posted 6th April 2007.)

So Lowles not an imaginary figure then. Or I daresay the Doc might have mentioned the fact, don't you?

webeatthebnp said... Re: "anonymous" (and why don't these saddoes find a nom de plume rather than be anon?) and others

Why do these "nationalists", all so proud of their culture and heritage, all share an inability to spell, punctuate and use correct syntax and grammar in the English language?

It really isn't so difficult. I seem to manage, and English was my second language !

(That'll get them worked up won't it ???).....well if there were not as many of you foreign cunts in the country, maybe, just maybe we would be able to teach British kids as they should be taught.

As for the rest of you scummy cunts, have you no morals, common sense or pride in your peolpe.

by the way i would not consider myself facist, far from it infact, i am just ..... , well, anti-anti-facist, everyone who is a native of this country is entitled to a say, why should we let foreigners dictate to us how the country should be run?

Wow before you delete this post outright take a bit of time to take down this email address and mail me a response "jbmf_think_about_it@yahoo.com"

Re' the moron who posted above, please don't email him: for all we know that's someone else's email address. Blogger doesn't allow comments to be edited or I'd have got rid of that bit but I thought the post was such a good example of the cretinous drivel we normally reject that it was worth allowing through for a change.

The real person who blew the venue, who isnt named on this list makes far more interesting reading for the BNP but would be embarrasing for UAF/Searchlight wouldnt it Ketlan? Here's a little clue: an undercover Glaswegian journalist living in Leeds..........

Just for the record, having done a bit of family history, can I point out to the foul-mouthed "non fascist" who describes me in the above terms that - as far as I can trace (which is to 1790-1850 on various family lines) - none of my ancestors were born outside the British Isles.

So I think that probably makes me as "pure" British as any nutty right-winger might care to define? Not that it bothers me - I'm no more, nor less, British than anyone else who commits themselves to our society.

But his vile posting certainly underlines the sort of uncouth yobbery we are fighting. And the sheer ignorance.

The Peter Rushton/Nick Lowles lie was too ridiculous for words... Yet for some reason the October issue of Searchlight seems almost to gloss over the lie. (Well, you can understand them not really wanting to show Nick Lowles's photo, as I guess they would have needed to if they really desired to blow this story out of the water - maybe this why is they just printed a short denial, & had a bit of a laugh over it, and no more.)

Oh come on, everyone knows that Nick Lowles is a pseudonym used by a number of people, including Gable, Lawrence King and Peter Rusthon. This is, of course, the reason why they can never show a picture of Nick Lowles.* You are also wrong when you class Peter Rushton as a "hard line ideologial" person. Everyone also knows that, until his unmasking and expulsion from the BNP in 2002, he was an ardent Nick Griffin supporter, and was completely in favour of the reformation of the BNP. Only once he was exposed, did he switch to being "hardline."

anon said, oh come on everyone knows...............i didnt know that pseudonyms, could walk into a bar, put their hands in their pockets, buy a round, stand there and drink a pint, and hold an intelligent conversation (which is more than the posting prat can).

Isn't it strange that Sharon Ebanks is another fash pointing to the merits of 'Notes from The Borderland' which it appears has done the disservice of printing a picture of one of the best investigative journalists into the far-right.

So let's get this straight, Notes From The Borderland is now being lauded by Sharon Ebanks, Patrick Harrington and Nick Griffin.

Regular readers will know full well that there was no 'coup attempt' within Solidarity until the former General Secretary Pat Harrington, long-time friend of Griffins, was suspended for, among other things, accounting irregularities. Following his suspension, the BNP-supported Harrington, with the direct collusion of Nick Griffin, himself engineered a coup, taking Solidarity's PayPal account, website and money with him. This is fact - we know it and Griffin knows it, yet without a qualm, lies and tells the membership that this is not the case.

A very partisan account of events within Solidarity. The suspension of our General Secretary at an inquorate meeting attended by only Potter and Hawke was an attempted coup. Their allegations at the time were later shown to be without foundation. They were examined by the authorities who took no action. They were even partly withdrawn by themselves! You are complaining because the counter-coup was more effective than the coup! They told you they would win and they were crushed.

BTW Nick Lowles is quite real. I recently heard him address a gathering of journalists. He was a member of Socialist Organiser at one time I think. A group only remarkable for its unusual support for 'Brave Little Israel'. He should rub along with Mossad very well.